On the heels of adding screen recording to iOS, Apple has revamped its screen capture tools for MacOS as well in the new Mojave version. Both screenshots and screen recording are now unified into a screen capture interface, making them much more convenient to access and utilize.

New Screen Capture Interface Explained

The new screen capture interface of MacOS Mojave can be brought up by pressing Command-Shift-5. A floating screen palette containing several options will appear on the screen, and you can select the one that you want to capture a screenshot or video.

For screenshots users will have 3 options that you can use to choose to capture the entire screen, a selected window, or a specific area. On the other hand, for screen recording users will have two options and can choose to record a video of the entire screen, or a specific area. When capturing a specific area of the screen in a screenshot or video, users will be prompted to draw a frame denoting the area that they want to capture.

During screen recording a button will appear in the menu that can be used to end the recording.

Aside from the options described above, there floating palette also contains an ‘Options’ menu with several further options that can be configured. In this menu you can opt where you want to save the video or image that is captured, and will be able to choose between the Desktop, Documents folder, Clipboard, Mail, Messages, or Preview.

In the options menu there is also a timer that you can use to set a delay of either 5 or 10 seconds before the capture begins. It is possible to set it to have no delay as well, if that is preferable.

Last but not least there are two other options, to show floating thumbnail and to show the mouse pointer. The second is self-explanatory and can be used to hide or display the pointer, while the first will let you decide whether or not a thumbnail of the video or screenshot appears after it is captured in the corner of the screen – and you can use that to open it up in the Markup tool for further editing.

Simplified Screen Capture

The screen recording feature is relatively basic, and if you were to try to learn how to make a training video or some other video content with it you’d face a lot of difficulty. For that you’d still need a more powerful screen recorder, such as Movavi Screen Capture Studio for example.

That being said it should be apparent that the new tool does simplify both screenshots and screen recording significantly. For screen recording in particular it will mean that MacOS users no longer need to rely on QuickTime to capture videos, and can quickly start recording at the drop of a hat if need be.

While there is no word as to whether or not Apple has any further improvements planned for the screen capture interface, for now it is a significant step forward.